My kitty has Hepatic lipidosis

This forum is for cat lovers seeking everyday advice and suggestions on health-related issues. Remember, however, that advice on a public forum simply can't be a substitute for proper medical attention. Only your vet can say assuredly what is best for your cat.

This is my first time posting on Catster, I used to be active in Dogster, but not anymore.

I just dropped my sweet kitty Pickle off at her vet this morning. The vet is pretty sure she has fatty liver disease. This is how it happened:

Pickle disappeared for several days and we could not find her. I don't know where her secret hiding place was, but we eventually found her under my roommate's bed the third day she was missing. She was skinny and I could feel her hip and shoulder bones. I tried to get her to eat, both wet and dry food, but she was uninterested. She would drink very little and only if I held the bowl up to her or dabbed a little on her whiskers with my finger.

They have her on an IV at the moment to rehydrate her and are going to try to get her to eat something soon. She was very jaundiced and her pee was a neon orange.

I'd just like to hear from others that have experienced this and had their cats survive. What did you have to go through, how long did it take for them to return to normal, etc... I'm pretty distraught and could use some success stories.

I'm sorry this is happening. This is pretty serious but it is survivable. My Alex was jaundiced and had HP and did survive it. She's gone but that was from a pancreatic infection. The key is to let the vets do what they need to do. They may need to put in a feeding tube if she doesn't eat but it may not come to that. Once she is rehydrated and has the right medication, the vet will do what they need to do to get food in her. She may even start eating on her own in no time! The important thing is that she is there now and that's where she NEEDS to be. Sending purrs and hugs.

Thank you. I do plan on letting them do whatever is necessary. I'm glad to hear that your cat survived HL. How long did it take for her to recover completely? Did she have to have a feeding tube or did she take in food on her own?

She took food on her own and she started to recover very slowly the same day. It did take a least a week for her to be well again but it took weeks for her coloring to come back. It's a slowl process but as I said, the most important thing you could have done is to bring her to the vet asap! SO glad you did that because you most likely saved her life!

So sorry to hear this. I was diagnosed with HL - but it was actually a blockage of my common bile duct. The symptoms are the same - jaundice, inappetence, lethargy.
I think HL may often be a diagnosis for an UNDER-LYING problem.
My vet told my mumma to look at TRIADITIS.
I had surgery and had a feeding tube in my neck for a few months.
Some cats who have true HL (these are usually cats who have been over weight and lose weight too fast) will begin to eat by themselves - others need a feeding tube to help them.
Mumma thinks that because you were hiding under the bed that here is an underlying issue that needs to be diagnosed.
We wish you the very best and hope you will keep us informed about Pickles.

My kitty Judy, has this too. They can survive this problem, but it takes a lot of work. She stopped eating and this is the results. We had a feeding tube placed and it took her 2 months to start eating on her own again. Meanwhile, I had to feed her thru the tube every 2 hours for the entire 2 months! It was tough, but she survived!

My Cee Cee passed from the results of this-but it was because of very bad vet care. By the time our vet got a hold of her, it was too late.

That said, it DID NOT HAVE TO BE!!!

What is needed with HL most of the time is a feeding tube. It is more scary for us humans than for cats. If Cee Cee's had been left in, and she had been fed properly, this would never have happened!!!!

Time is of the essence!!! Is your vet going to insert a feeding tube? I believe that if you check Lisa Provost's IBD.net website, there is a whole piece on HL!!!!!

Please check it out!!!

Cat's lives have been saved with feeding tubes. You see, the cats will start to eat on their own once they are getting fed via tube because they become sick to their stomachs otherwise.

Please ask your vet about a feeding tube....

this hits close to home. If you read Cee Cee's page, you'll understand.

I just wanted to post an update on my kitty, Pickle, so this thread can be helpful to someone else in the future.

Pickle had to stay at the vet for a couple of days. They still could not get her to eat any food, so they gave us the option of a feeding tube inserted into her esophagus. We decided to go ahead with it, they inserted it and we took her home the next day.

I do have to say that feeding a kitty through a feeding tube is a lot of work, but it was easy with my cat because she felt so ill that she did not put up a fight. We fed her 4 times a day with a prescription wet food the vet gave us mixed with a little water to thin the food out so it would go down easy (we often had to put it in the blender because it tends to have little chunks of liver in it that would clog her feeding tube). We also had an anti-nausea medication and an antibiotic to give her in the morning and night. The key is diligence and not skipping a single chance to get food in the tummy. I also worked on encouraging her to eat her kibble every morning and night.

It took about two weeks before I discovered that she was eating on her own again. I woke up in the middle of the night to her crunching away at her food bowl, and I was so happy! After that she gained almost all of her weight back in about half a week. We took her in for her final check up two weeks ago and the vets were all thrilled at how she looked, and how much her attitude had picked up again. They removed the feeding tube two days later and now she is a happy kitty once more.